User blog:Battlefan237/Thousand-year gap : Li Kui (Water Margin) vs. Leatherface (TCM)
Homicidal maniac is a common type of characters seen across fiction. From ancient Chinese classics to 80s slasher flicks, psychopaths with murderous intents have always been cast in for different purposes. Today, we have two of the most iconic characters of this type. One from the east, one from the west, one from ancient China, one from modern day America. Will Leatherface continue his rampage, or will Li Kui overcome the time gap and tear the chainsaw murderer apart ? Let's see. Li Kui Li Kui（李逵） is a fictional character in Water Margin, one of the Four Great Classical Novels （The other three being the Romance of Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West and the Red Chamber) in Chinese literature. Described as a muscular man with a dark complexion, a reddish-yellow unibrow, and fiery eyes, Li Kui earned the nickname "Iron Ox". However, he is more popularly referred to as "Black Whirlwind" for his berserk behaviour in combat and dark complexion. He has a bad temper and a strong penchant for alcohol, and is known to be a hardcore gambler. Many parts of Li Kui's background remained unclear, however, what is known to us is that he fled his hometown at a young age after committing brutal murders and became a warden in nearby county, where he met Song Jiang, a leader of a group of outlaws. Recognizing Li's brutality and fighting skills, Song recruited him. Later on Song's outlaw group developed into a large bandit organization and eventually started rebelling against Song Dynasty. During this period of time, Li Kui acted as an enforcer and played a key role in many of the rebel group's heists, ambushes and clashes with other bandit forces. As the enforcer, Li is particularly known for his brutal style and pathological thirst for violence. While other rebels take killing as tasks, mostly won't kill until necessary and feel reluctant in killing by passers, Li takes killing as fun, enjoys killing and is notorious for murdering innocent by passers in gruesome fashion, qualifying him as one of the earliest psychopaths in literature. Weapons *Iconic - Twin Axe : Li's signature weaponS in the original book and modern day game adaptations. They are essentially a pair of woodcutting axes, with the slightly larger blades.The original book didn't dig deep into the stats of the weapon, but it was implied that the axes resembled common woodcutting axes, but maintained slightly larger blades. *Backup - Fists: Li Kui isn't really known for using any other weapons. But he's a skilled brawler and has a good record of beating up other outlaws and bandits in fist brawls. *Blunt - Gun （棍） : Basically a crude handmade wooden staff commonly used by the rebels forces. Approximately 3 feet in length. Leatherface Leatherface, real name Jedidiah Sawyer, is a mentally-challenged man who acts as the muscle and butcher of the cannibalistic Sawyer family. He earned his name from the human leather masks he wears which are made out of the faces of his victims. Leatherface suffers from a facial disfigurement and a skin disease that caused severe deformities and tumours to his face. This combined with his inability to speak and mental retardation caused him to be severely bullied as a child, because of this he became insecure of his own face and tries to hide this with his famous masks. Due to his size and strength, Leatherface is often used to murder and butcher the Sawyer's victims. After having butchered his victims and made them ready to be prepared he cuts off their faces to turn them in masks. I believe many of us here have already known a lot about Leatherface, so I won't be investing much in his bio. If you haven't heard about this warrior, check it out here. Weapons *Iconic - Chainsaw : A common tool used for wood-cutting. Roughly 10-20 lb in weight and 16-36 inches in length. The exact type of chainsaw used in TCM isn't revealed, but I'm sure most of you guys have a picture about it in mind. *Backup - Meat Cleaver: Acting as the family's butcher, Leatherface is always seen cutting open his victims with a cleaver. The blade used in this fight will be about 12 inches in length. *Blunt - Hammer: Leatherface has a crude homemade hammer. To get a picture of it, click here . X-factors (Li-Leatherface) *Experience: 85-60. Li joined Song Jiang's Liang Shan Rebel and fought against other bandits, rebels, mobs, Song soldiers, tigers, Chinese cults and so on. Leatherface only butchered unarmed teens and fought Jason Voorhees in a non-canon comic ( which will not be taken into consideration ). *Brutality: 100-100. Both are incredibly brutal individuals and won't really hesitate to kill. *Intimidation :85-90. Both score high. Li usually intimidates his foes through behaving in obnoxious ways, such as roaring and yelling. However, Leatherface uses human skin as mask and wields a chainsaw. Enough said. *Stealth:85 - (chainsaw off 85, chainsaw on 0). Li Kui is a part of a rebel that excessively uses guerrilla tactics and ambushes as means to counter Song authority, and Li is capable of remaining quiet and stealthy before attacking in those operations. Leatherface is quiet and stealthy when he sneaks towards his preys, but once his weapon is activated, he can be noticed from a mile away. *Combat Skills: 80 -70. Li, while not one of the best martial artists, is really no jokes when it comes to combat. Not only did he outfought Song soldiers and other rebels in brawls, but also he managed to slay four tigers ( two cubs, two adults) to avenge for his mother, who got killed by the beasts when he was out searching for water ( the two were fleeing from hometown and got stuck in a forest). Leatherface, being a muscular man, can definitely put up a fight, but there no record of him engaging in any quality fights. Battle "有人吗？(Anybody inside ?)" Yelled Li Kui, as made his way through the dusty, seemingly deserted living room of the Sawyer's butcher house, carefully placing his feet on the empty area between the animal skeletons displayed around the set. Finally crossing the room, the Iron Ox found himself standing in front of a small door. Hanging on the door was the skull of a large animal, properly a cow, along with several other animal skulls and body parts and hooks, whose tops seemed to be covered with blood that smelt fresh. Slightly annoyed by this eerie sight, Li hacked his axe at the skull, instantly crushing it into pieces. As grandpa Sawyer's most cherished artifact fell apart, the door behind it suddenly opened up, revealing a bulky man dressed in a ridiculously large apron, with crude makeups marking the spots where the man's lip and eyes were supposed to be situated on the man's bag-like mask. "娘的，你是什么鸟东西？（F**king crap, what kind of messed-up shit are you ?）" Yelled Li Kui, as he raised his axes in a defensive position. The masked man, however, ignored his questions, partly due to the language barriers, and drew out a hammer from his large pocket. Capturing Leatherface's unfriendly action, Li immediately dispatched his left axe towards the incoming blunt instrument, blocking it in its way. With the right-hand axe applied, he easily knocked the homemade killing tool out of Leatherface's hands, breaking its handle apart and sending the blunt head crashing to the ground, landing right on the back of Leatherface's left foot. Suddenly erupting on the chainsaw murderer's toe, was a sharp pain. Groaning in distress, the big man backed off and dodged into the corridor behind the door, running back to the storage to get his most beloved tool of death,with Li Kui in hot pursuit. Rushing towards the end of the corridor, Leatherface turned right and seemingly plunged himself into another door. Upon reaching the end, Li found two doors available. Kicking the first door open, Li found no traces of Leatherface, but was instead presented with an extremely disturbing scene. Even for a harsh murderer like him, the graphic picture in front of Li and the strong smell of a mixture of blood and rotted flesh were enough to arouse a violent impulse to vomit. Hanging on the hook installed on the ceiling of this small room, was the dead body of a man, with his clothes ripped off, body gutted open and intestines leaking out of the large wound on his stomach. The most unnerving part of it, however, was the state of the poor man's head, completely smashed open by something blunt, probably the hammer that psycho used to ambush him. Retreating from the room, Li was fast enough to catch up with Leatherface, who had just picked up his favorite toy and came bolting out of the storage room nearby. Roaring wildly and tearing through the air, was the chainsaw with which the Sawyer Family spread their legends through countless massacres and acts of extreme brutality. With a weapon beyond the description of any words from ancient Chinese rampaging towards his position, the Black Tornado backed off, obviously startled by this futuristic abomination beyond his Song Dynasty level of imagination. Hastily darting back, the Iron Ox was cornered by the Texan slasher, who pushed forward his weapon and made a violent swing. With his experience fighting feral beasts, Li was able to swiftly dodge aside, narrowly drawing his left arm out of the moving blade's orbit, leaving the left-hand ax's handle to be cut apart. With his first slash missing the target, Leatherface roared in displeasure and attempted to swing back his butcher tool, whose inertness and massive physical momentum sabotaged the masked psycho's dream of making a quick and graceful swing, granting the Iron Ox with the chance to detach the wooden staff from his belt and slammed it towards Leatherface's knee with the level of strength he inflicted upon the tigers that took his mother's life. With the impact made, Leatherface let out a painful roar and kneed down, dropping the chainsaw aside, sending it crashing into the shelf close by. The clumsy tool jammed the moment its blade thrust into a wooden box, rendering it as an utterly useless sack of machinery. Hardly had Leatherface regained his till when Li Kui's fist came crashing onto his jaw, knocking him backward and sending him crashing into the other shelf, which was not stable enough to handle this sudden input of weight and crumbled down. Lying in the midst of broken 2x4s and kitchen tools, Leatherface picked up a meat cleaver in a desperate attempt to defend himself. Raising it up, the last thing the Sawyer family's muscle saw in his life of killings and cannibalism was the shiny blade of Li Kui's second ax. Smashing it onto Leatherface's head, Li Kui continued hacking at the masked killer beneath, until the last bit of life was forced out of the psycho's flesh. With the opponent defeated, Li Kui let out a roar of victory and entered the storage room, inside which he noticed a tool that shared great resemblance to 火铳 (Hand Cannon), a relatively new weapon used by the most elite factions of 禁军 (the Song Dynasty Royal Army). He had only seen it once in Kaifeng, and according to other Liang Shan rogues, this new weapon maintained the power to slaughter gods. Picking up the tool, Li placed his ax aside and picked it up. Hardly had he examined it when he was teleport back to his own realm. "娘的，什么鸟事。" (Holy crap , the f**k just happened ?) It was not time for him to keep wondering about it, though, because several Song soldiers from the 县衙 (Local Law Enforcement Department in ancient China) were coming towards him, Daos and Qiangs in their hands. With his weapons left inside Sawyer's residence, Li Kui had no choice but to seek help from his new little friend. Based on his memory of the hand cannon, the Black Whirlwind pointed the tool at the incoming soldiers and opened fire by pulling the small handle set at the back of the firearm, hitting the first soldier in the chest. ”爽快。“（Awesome.) Seeing the first soldier collapsing down, he continued firing the shotgun at the remaining soldiers, pounding them down one after another. The last one tried to flee,only to receive solid shotgun blast on his back and get pinned down on the ground. With the threat eliminated, Li turned back and began heading back to Liang Shan Headquarter, where he would show the new weapon to the brightest minds of their clan and allow them to figure out the way it works. Very soon would the Song government be drawn to this unremarkable little town and even the finest soldiers of the empire would be trembling under the immense power the bandits' new set of tools possessed, and so would the Jin and West Xia, after a lead ball pierced Huizong Emperor's forehead. And very soon, the whole world in the ancient Chinese literature realm would have to embrace a storm. Winner:Li Kui Expert's Opinion Despite living in ancient times, Li Kui claims victory over the modern slasher due to his better weapons, better experience and better fighting skills. Category:Blog posts